Thursday, December 4, 2008

A Great Story I Just Read.

I am currently reading, very slowly in small snippets, Silvia Pettem's "Positively Pearl St.", which is a history of Boulder's main drag by Boulder's most prominent historian. I came across a story that is so good I had to share it.

In March of 1975, Boulder County Clerk Clela Rorex began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. State law at the time did not specify that marriage must be between a man and a woman. In protest, a local character named Ros Howard applied for a marriage license to wed his horse Dolly. "If a boy can marry a boy, and a girl can marry a girl, why can't a lonesome old cowboy get hitched to his favorite saddle mare?" he asked.

Howard, a local writer and radio personality at the time, claimed in his book that his request was turned down because his horse was only 8, below the age of consent. That would be a great story, were it the truth (and it is the ending I will use when I tell this story on the Banjo Billy Bus). In fact, the law did state something about marriage being for "persons", and Dolly did not qualify as one.

By the way, Howard "protest" was all done in good fun, for laughs and publicity, a reminder that we should never lose our sense of humor no matter what side of an argument we take.